David Asper Centre for Constitutional Rights

WEBINAR: COVID-19 Contact Tracing and the Canadian Constitution
2020-07-29 12:00 - 13:30 (America/Toronto)
The David Asper Centre for Constitutional Rights & the Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society were pleased to co-present
COVID-19 Contact Tracing and the Canadian Constitution
a FREE WEBINAR on Wednesday July 29, 2020 @12:00-1:30pm
Contact tracing apps play an important role alongside human tracing in our public health response to the COVID-19 pandemic. In order to ensure that contact tracing apps infringe our Constitutional rights as little as possible, however, the apps must be carefully constructed and the information they collect must be safeguarded. In a highly collaborative research paper entitled “Test, Trace, and Isolate: COVID-19 and the Canadian Constitution,” a team of experts from the University of Toronto, York University and the Ontario Tech University reviewed the benefits and limitations of using contact tracing apps to identify people who have been exposed to COVID-19.
In this webinar, the paper’s authors Lisa Austin (pictured), Vincent Chiao, David Lie (pictured), and Andrea Slane took part in a group discussion, led by Asper Centre Executive Director Cheryl Milne, about their research and conclusions including: the usefulness of contact tracing apps, the privacy choices involved in the technical design of these apps, which app the government has selected to use and why, as well as the privacy impacts considered under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which provides a framework for balancing competing rights and interests.
The panelists will be available for questions at the end of their discussion. An electronic copy of the paper is available here. Email tal.schreier@utoronto.ca for inquiries.
WEBINAR RECORDING LINK
Authors’ BIOS
Lisa Austin BA &Sc (McMaster) 1994, MA (Toronto) 1995, LLM (Toronto) (1998), PhD (Toronto) 2005, called to the Bar of Ontario in 2006, is a Professor of Law and the Chair in Law and Technology at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law. She is a co-founder of the IT3 Law at the University of Toronto, which engages in interdisciplinary research on privacy and transparency. Professor Austin’s research and teaching interests include privacy law, property law, and legal theory. She is published in such journals as Legal Theory, Law and Philosophy, Theoretical Inquiries in Law, Canadian Journal of Law and Jurisprudence, and Canadian Journal of Law and Society. Professor Austin’s privacy work has been cited numerous times by Canadian courts, including the Supreme Court of Canada.
Vincent Chiao, B.A. (University of Virginia), Ph.D. (Northwestern), J.D. (Harvard), is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Law of the University of Toronto. He researches and teaches primarily in the area of criminal law and criminal justice, with a particular interest in the philosophical examination of its doctrine and institutions. He is the author of Criminal Law in the Age of the Administrative State (Oxford University Press 2018). He is also responsible for overseeing the Faculty of Law’s appellate criminal law externship, which provides selected third year JD students with the opportunity to work directly on criminal appeals, including before the Ontario Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court of Canada.
Dr. Beth Coleman is Associate Professor of Data & Cities at the Institute of Communication, Culture, Information and Technology and Faculty of Information, University of Toronto, where she directs the City as Platform lab. Working in the disciplines of Science and Technology Studies and Critical Race Theory, her research focuses on smart technology & machine learning, urban data, and civic engagement. She is the author of Hello Avatar and multiple articles addressing issues of smart cities, urban data, augmentation & experience design, and critical race, among others. She has presented at leading international conferences and municipal contexts such as CHI; Sharing Cities, Barcelona; Gender and Cities, Geneva; Mars/Waterfront Toronto. Her research affiliations include the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, Harvard University; Microsoft Research; Data & Society Institute, New York; and expert consultant for the European Commission Digital Futures. She is one of the foundational directors of Thriving Cities, Mistletoe Singapore. Her previous academic positions include the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and University of Waterloo.
David Lie received his BASc from the University of Toronto in 1998, and his MS and PhD from Stanford University in 2001 and 2004 respectively. He is currently Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Toronto.  He also holds appointments in the Department of Computer Science, the Faculty of Law and is a research lead with the Schwartz Riesman Institute for Technology and Society.  He is known for his seminal work on the XOM architecture, which was an early precursor to modern trusted execution processor architectures such as ARM Trustzone and Intel SGX.  He was the recipient of a best paper award at SOSP for this work. David is also a recipient of the MRI Early Researcher Award, Connaught Global Challenge Award.  He developed the PScout Android Permission mapping tool, whose datasets have been downloaded over 10,000 times and used in dozens of subsequent papers.  David has served on various program committees including OSDI, Usenix Security, IEEE Security & Privacy, NDSS and CCS.  Currently, his interests are focused on securing mobile platforms, cloud computing security and bridging the divide between technology and policy.
Martha Shaffer is a Professor at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law, which she joined in 1990. She holds law degrees from Harvard and Toronto, as well as an undergraduate degree from Harvard. She served as Law Clerk to the Supreme Court of Canada for Chief Justice Brian Dickson, before becoming the Boulton Junior Fellow at the Faculty of Law, McGill University. Professor Shaffer’s principal research and teaching interests concentrate on criminal law, family law and equality issues.
Dr. Andrea Slane joined Ontario Tech University’s Faculty of Social Science and Humanities in 2009 as an Associate Professor in the Legal Studies program. She is also the Associate Dean of Research and Graduate Programs, Legal Studies. Her research focuses on privacy, data protection, and the variety of legal regimes that protect people from both individual and commercial wrongdoing online and over digital devices. She has a substantial body of work on the appropriate means to regulate the flow of personal information, whether between individuals; individuals and businesses; businesses and government; business to business; or to the public. She has also conducted sociological research on the views of professionals who work with victims of online child sexual exploitation, and is currently engaged in a new project examining senior citizens’ views toward new social support technologies such as digital assistants and social robots, and the kinds of protections they feel they need.
François Tanguay-Renaud is a Professor of Law and the Director of York University’s Jack & Mae Nathanson Centre on Transnational Human Rights, Crime and Security since 2012. He is also one of the founders and first Director of York’ University’s Juris Doctor/Master of Arts (JD/MA) combined program in law and philosophy, the founder and main administrator of the Ontario Legal Philosophy Partnership (OLPP) and a former Associate Dean Research, Graduate Studies, and Institutional Relations. Professor Tanguay-Renaud holds degrees in both civil and common law from McGill University, where he was both a Loran Scholar and a Greville-Smith Scholar. He also studied at the National University of Singapore, and completed his graduate work (BCL, MPhil, DPhil) at the University of Oxford. Professor Tanguay-Renaud ‘s current academic interests span a wide range of subject areas — but notably, criminal law, criminal procedure, constitutional law, emergency law, and public international law — viewed mostly through the lens of analytical legal theory.

Constitutional Roundtable with Professor Aileen Kavanagh
2023-03-28 12:30 - 14:00 | Jackman Law Building Room J140, 78 Queen’s Park
Please join us on Tuesday March 28, 2023 at 12:30pm for an Asper Centre Constitutional Roundtable with Professor Aileen Kavanagh on her forthcoming book, The Collaborative Constitution.
The David Asper Centre for Constitutional Rights’ Constitutional Roundtables are an annual series of lunchtime discussion forums that provide an opportunity to consider developments in Canadian constitutional theory and practice. The Constitutional Roundtable series promotes scholarship and aims to make a meaningful contribution to intellectual discourse about Canadian constitutional law.
All are welcome. No Registration or RSVP required. Light lunch will be provided.
The Collaborative Constitution by Aileen Kavanagh
Which branch of government should we trust to protect rights in a democracy? Some take a court-centric approach to this question, arguing that the courts provide a ‘forum of principle’ which makes them uniquely situated to protect rights against the feared and fabled ‘tyranny of the majority’. Others put their faith in the democratic legislature, as a supremely dignified, diverse, and deliberative forum which can protect our rights against the oligarchic offensive of an ermined elite. Rejecting the binary options of either the courts or the legislature, this book argues that protecting rights is a collaborative enterprise between all three branches of government where each branch has a distinct but complementary role to play, whilst working together with the other branches in constitutional partnership. Instead of advocating the hegemony and supremacy of one branch over another, this book articulates a collaborative vision of constitutionalism where the protection of rights is a shared responsibility between all three branches. On this vision, protecting rights is neither the solitary domain of a Herculean super-judge, nor the dignified pronouncements of an enlightened legislature. Instead, it is a complex, dynamic, and collaborative enterprise, where each branch of government has a valuable role to play, whilst treating the other branches with comity and respect.
The Collaborative Constitution is forthcoming with Cambridge University Press in June 2023. Please see the Introduction and Ch 3 of the book, which have been graciously shared by the author in advance of this Roundtable.
Aileen Kavanagh is Professor of Constitutional Governance at Trinity College Dublin and Director of TriCON, the Trinity Centre for Constitutional Governance. Formerly Professor of Constitutional Law at the University of Oxford, Aileen Kavanagh has written widely on comparative constitutional law, human rights and constitutional theory. Her previous books include Constitutional Review under the UK Human Rights Act 1998 (CUP, 2009).

Constitutional Roundtable with Professor Alison Young
2024-01-11 12:30 - 14:00 | Jackman Law Building Room J140, 78 Queen’s Park
The David Asper Centre for Constitutional Rights’ Constitutional Roundtables are an annual series of lunchtime discussion forums that provide an opportunity to consider developments in Canadian constitutional theory and practice. The Constitutional Roundtable series promotes scholarship and aims to make a meaningful contribution to intellectual discourse about Canadian and comparative constitutional law.

On Thursday January 11, 2024, the Asper Centre presented a lunchtime Constitutional Roundtable with
Professor Alison Young
The Sir David Williams Professor of Public Law & Director of Research at the Cambridge University Faculty of Law, about her new book, Unchecked Power? How Recent Constitutional Reforms Are Threatening UK Democracy (2023, Bristol University Press)
Time: 12:30pm to 2:00pm
Location: (Room FA2), Falconer Hall 84 Queen’s Park, Faculty of Law
All Are Welcome * No Registration Required * Light Lunch Provided

About the Book
Is the UK government really acting for the people? Or does this rhetoric simply justify an executive power-grab? For some, Boris Johnson’s premiership epitomised how far the UK’s democracy has been captured by populism and the Prime Minister seemed more concerned about fulfilling the wishes of the British people than with following the rules or listening to Parliament.
Events like ‘Partygate’ grabbed the headlines. Criticisms of Boris Johnson’s actions eventually led to his resignation and replacement as leader of his party and Prime Minister. Some feel that this shows that the UK’s constitution is healthy, with checks and balances in place to prevent any possible abuse of power.
While these events attracted much media attention, other constitutional changes have been taking place with little public awareness. These have strengthened governmental powers and weakened political and legal checks over governmental actions. Deliberation is being replaced by rhetoric and principles of good government no longer seem to restrain the actions of those in power.
Alison Young provides the first consolidated account of these changes, arguing that the UK is currently on a constitutional cliff-edge which endangers democracy and good constitutional government. She argues that more is needed to shore up the UK’s post-Brexit constitution to prevent it collapsing into a system of unchecked power.
From https://www.law.cam.ac.uk/people/academic/al-young/77940:
“Professor Young’s Interests
I research in all aspects of public law, both of the UK and the EU. My main interest is in constitutional theory, particularly dialogue theory, where I draw comparisons between different means of protecting human rights. I’m also interested in comparative public law, specifically drawing comparisons between UK law, EU law, the law in other commonwealth countries and France. I also have research interests in freedom of expression and in the protection of human rights through private law.
I have published widely in all of these areas, and am the author of Parliamentary Sovereignty and the Human Rights Act (Hart Publishing, 2009). I was the recipient of a Leverhulme Research Fellowship in 2015. The Fellowship enabled me to write a book on dialogue theory, Democratic Dialogue and the Constitution (OUP, 2017), which was a runner up for the main Inner Temple Book Prize, 2018.
Professor Young’s CV / Biography
I am the Sir David Williams Professor of Public Law at the University of Cambridge, and a Fellow of Robinson College. I am also currently a legal advisor to the House of Lords Select Committee on the Constitution and an academic associate at 39 Essex Chambers. I am a member of the Editorial Board of European Public Law, and of Public Law. I’m also a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. I’m a trustee of The Constitution Society and a member of the UK Constitution Monitoring Group. I’m affiliated with the Oxford Human Rights Hub and with the Programme for the Foundations of Law and Constitutional Government, both at the University of Oxford. I am also an Emeritus Fellow of Hertford College, Oxford.
Before joining the University of Cambridge I studied for a Law (with French) degree at the University of Birmingham, spending a year at the Université de Limoges as part of my degree. I then completed the BCL and D Phil at Hertford College, University of Oxford. I spent three years as a Tutorial Fellow at Balliol College, Oxford, before returning to Hertford as a Fellow in Law and later Professor of Public Law at the University of Oxford. At Oxford I completed a Postgraduate Diploma in Learning and Teaching in Higher Education and received awards for Teaching Excellence and Innovation from the University of Oxford.”
